Highland Township employees will see a pay hike in 2015, but elected officials will go without.

The township’s Board of Trustees last month voted 5-2 to approve next year’s budget, minus 2-percent raises for elected officials, proposed by Supervisor Rick Hamill for his position as well as that of the clerk, treasurer and four trustees.

“Elected officials shouldn’t get a… raise,” said Trustee Russ Tierney during final discussions before the board adopted next year’s budget. “They should stick with the salary they chose to campaign and be elected for. I don’t have a problem with a 2-percent cost of living raise for the employees of the township but not for elected officials.”

As Tierney reminded the board, Hamill proposed and was granted raises for the clerk, treasurer and himself last year, bringing all three in line with equal salaries of $68,000, which equated to a 6.5 percent increase for the clerk and treasurer and a small raise for himself.

“To impose (a raise) upon yourselves is wrong,” Tierney said. “You can (propose a raise), however, it’s up to the trustees on this board to say, ‘No, we disagree with that, we don’t think it’s proper.”

Trustee Chuck Dittmar agreed.

“If we want to have a pot of money set aside in the budget for merit-based raises, as an average 2 percent across the board for staff, I’m fine with that. But elected officials just got the bump last year in the middle of the (four-year election) term, and getting another bump now... doesn’t make sense,” Dittmar said. “You knew what the job paid when you got elected.”

“The amount of money isn’t the issue, it’s the principle of the matter,” Dittmar added. “The elected officials get their evaluation once every four years, basically. If there’s a time to make an adjustment, that’s the time to do it.”

Supervisor sounds off

Hamill, however, disagreed with the logic proposed by Tierney and Dittmar.

“I am an employee,” said Hamill, who along with Clerk Mary McDonell voted against a budget that did not include raises for elected officials. “So is the clerk, so is the treasurer. We have a business environment that is an employment-based entity.”

State statute, Hamill said, does not make mention of a compensation timeline, and, often, pay raises for elected officials become a political issue.

“If I don’t accept the pay, that might help me get elected again in the future,” he said. “If I accept the pay, (people say) ‘Geez, the guy’s a creep, he’s taking extra money he’s… worried about padding his pocket.’

“These numbers we’ve got are not pocket-padders,” added Hamill. “I think it’s not correct to assume because somebody goes out for an election that they only deserve the pay they got the first day they came in. I think you need to treat all the people equal including trustees and in house officials.”

Although Hamill had also penciled in 2-percent raises for trustees, the vote against raises for elected officials means no raises for those four members of the board, who currently earn about $5,700 in the position.

Treasurer Judy Cooper voted in favor of passing the budget at last week’s meeting, although, she said later, she was not opposed to a raise, had it been awarded.

“I think cost-of-living is fair,” Cooper said. “But the budget is bigger than me, and we had to approve it. I’m not going to vote the whole budget down because I didn’t get a raise.”

Cooper added that elected officials are careful to keep tabs on salaries of in-house officials in neighboring communities, and Highland comes in on the low end.

In Milford Township for example, the supervisor, clerk and treasurer each collect $75,000 annually and will receive a 1.6 percent raise if the township’s board of trustees approves its 2015 budget as presented Wednesday.

Overall, Highland Township is looking at general fund revenues of about $2.5 million for 2015, with expenditures coming in at the same level.